Why did 10 migrants die in this truck in Texas?

Their deaths, after being crammed into an uncooled trailer amid scorching summer heat, expose the callousness of smuggling along the US-Mexico border

One day earlier this month, Johny Serna was brought by his mother to pray the rosary at a parish shrine to Santo Toribio Romo, the patron saint of migrants, with his uncle and his best friend. They had a long journey ahead.

The next morning, the trio departed for the US-Mexico border, where they crossed the Rio Grande, finally climbing into a crowded 18-wheeler that would take them part of the way to their ultimate destination, Chicago.

The truck turned out to be a death trap.

Serna, 18, survived the scorching heat and asphyxiating conditions as did his uncle. But 10 others died in a tragedy that exposed the perils of crossing the frontier illegally and the callous indifference of the criminals who transport migrants.

About 30 more victims were hospitalised in San Antonio, where the truck and its grim cargo were discovered in a Walmart parking lot after a supermarket employee became suspicious and called police when one of the passengers asked him for water. As many as a hundred people from Mexico and Central America had been crammed inside.

At least 11 hailed from the small Mexican state of Aguascalientes, where young men head north to make enough money to better their lot in life back home. Its a long established rite of passage for successive generations tired of scratching meagre livings from this region of dry highlands dotted with corn fields, guava groves and prickly pear cacti.

Serna hated factory work and instead laboured in construction and picked guavas. He had a single goal: buying a house. He wanted to earn more and live a little better, said his cousin, Omar Romo Serna, a pudgy 18-year-old with a thin beard.

Aguascalientes, in the geographic heart of Mexico, is considered one of the countrys more prosperous states, but even here the lure of the US is irresistible to many.

Gabriel Hernndez, the city manager in Palo Alto an hour east of Calvillo and home to seven of the trailer victims cites pay at home as the problem. He says migrants work long and hard hours in the US but dont feel exploited like they do in Mexico, where shifts in factories are long and pay might amount to $85 (65) a week.

Many migrants simply dream of buying their own homes. Walking the dusty but tidy streets of the town, Hernndez who spent nearly two decades in the US points out the larger homes with brick facades mean American money. Shabby concrete structures with corrugated metal roofs suggest no access to US funds.

Adrin Lara Vega, 27, laboured as a bricklayer but couldnt afford to move his family from a single room behind his parents home, among the chickens and pigs the Vegas raise to put food on the table. Relatives said he couldnt find work for the three weeks prior to his departure.

They didnt leave here for ambition, to get the latest model car, said Laras aunt, Rosalba Vega. He wanted to feed his family. Vega, who was injured in the trailer, was trying to reach Florida, where a cousin and other friends from Palo Alto were waiting.

Even Donald Trumps migration crackdown and the rise of anti-migrant attitudes in the US is not enough to dissuade the towns men from seeking better fortunes north of the border, said Patricia Briones, whose husband, Jos Rodrguez, perished in the truck. He didnt want to go to the United States, she said. But the economic situation is so dire here.

Rodrguez, 38, lived in the US for 20 years, working construction jobs in North Carolina. Briones joined him and they raised five children all US citizens until Rodrguez was deported in 2016.

He was determined to return: he never readjusted to life in Palo Alto and couldnt raise a family of five there.

Its sad, Briones said at her parents home as her children, aged seven to 15, played with tops and fidget spinners. Jos provided for the family. I dont work outside the home and have to raise five children.

He was told that people linked to the feared Zetas drug cartel would charge 11,000 pesos (473) for protection and 1,500 pesos (64) for use of the raft. The Zetas started providing security to Cuban migrants crossing Mexico around 2004, then expanded this obligatory protection service to other migrants crossing states they controlled.

However, the Zetas have never been directly involved in people smuggling, according to professor Rodolfo Casillas, an expert in migrant routes and criminal networks at the Latin American Social Science Institute (Flacso).

Smuggling migrants is a specialist service, the Zetas dont have the knowledge, experience or prestige in this business. That doesnt mean the migrants didnt have to pay them for security at some point, he said.

Criminal gangs dont start and stop at borders they operate through networks of accomplices which include transport companies and drivers, said Erubiel Tirado, a security analyst. But he also said that it is not uncommon for other criminal groups to use the Zetas name to generate terror or to detract attention from themselves and confuse the authorities.

Once in Texas, the migrants walked for hours and were picked up the next morning and taken to the trailer, where they assembled with others, all waiting to depart in the evening.

At about 9pm, a man appeared and handed pieces of coloured tape to the groups to distinguish them for the smugglers who would be collecting them later. Dont worry, the man said: the truck has refrigeration, the trip will be fine.

But the cooling system was broken, and the container became an oven in the summer heat. The outdoor temperature reached a high of 38C (100F) and a low of 24C (75F) in San Antonio on 22 July, and the city is a two-and-a-half hour drive from Laredo.

Panic set in quickly, said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of Raices, a San Antonio-based immigrant legal aid organisation that is helping represent some of the survivors. Some cried, screamed and hammered on the walls. Others lost consciousness and hallucinated when they came round, believing they were dead.

The truck was from Iowa and driven by James Bradley, a 60-year-old with roots in Florida and Kentucky and a long criminal record. He is being held without bail and could face the death penalty.

According to the criminal complaint against him, Bradley knew the trailer refrigeration system didnt work and that the vent holes were probably clogged up.

He told the authorities he was taken by surprise when he got out of the truck to urinate, heard banging and shaking in the trailer and was knocked over as people swarmed out when he opened the doors around midnight.

Some scattered into woodland to the west of the parking lot or were picked up by a half-dozen waiting SUVs. Bradley noticed bodies just lying on the floor like meat. Eight were dead and two would die later. But he did not call 911.

Migrants who have recovered from dehydration and other heat-related illnesses and are well enough to leave hospital are being detained by federal authorities.

Attorneys and advocates are seeking their release and gearing up to fight the possibility of deportation. The survivors of this awful event are now being treated like criminals themselves, Ryan said.

I think right now the biggest aspect of their condition is theyre traumatised, theyre scared, said Michael McCrum, an attorney representing 13 people being held as potential witnesses. He hopes they will be granted visas in return for helping law enforcement with their investigations. Ive already broached it with the prosecutors but its too early to have anything meaningful [decided], he said.

It is one of the deadliest migrant-smuggling incidents in the US since May 2003, when 19 bodies were found in a milk truck abandoned at a truck stop in the Texas city of Victoria, 120 miles south-east of San Antonio. The first to die was a five-year-old boy who died in his fathers arms. The refrigeration system had been turned off.

Yet the dangers are not enough to end the flow of migrants, who continue to put their money and their lives in the hands of smuggling networks engaged in a form of hide-and-seek with federal officers along an increasingly militarised border.

Later on Sunday, on the same route from Laredo along interstate 35 taken by Bradleys truck, agents at a Border Patrol checkpoint found 12 migrants from Honduras and Guatemala in a tractor-trailer. They were alive, but the temperature inside was 43C (109F).

The following day, shoppers filled their trolleys as usual in the Walmart, with its brightly lit aisles, vast array of goods and a long line of American flags draped from the ceiling.

In the shade of a tree in the parking lot, near an orange online orders sign bearing an arrow and the instruction Pickup, a modest memorial had emerged. Nestled amid candles, crosses, flowers and teddy bears were two bottles of water.